


Les Chrysanthèmes

by Petronia



Category: Temeraire - Novik
Genre: Gen, Poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-07-20
Updated: 2006-07-20
Packaged: 2017-10-05 18:31:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/44760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Petronia/pseuds/Petronia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-<i>Black Powder War,</i> Lien's poetry - which would of course have received a scholarly translation into French, given circumstances.  (Pastiches of <a href="http://www.chinapage.org/poet-e/liqing-e.html">Li Qingzhao</a>.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Les Chrysanthèmes

**Author's Note:**

> Translator's note:
> 
> "I have done my best to approximate the impact and emotion Lien's poetry must have in the Chinese, but given the impossibilty of adequately expressing its highly formal and complex structure, and the errors of phrasing that inevitably occur when one is working from the translation of a translation, I fear that my effort are, at best, satisfactory."
> 
> -P.L.

 

I have put aside  
the pearls you gifted me.  
Henceforth I will be adorned  
in dew  
and the bitter taste of tears.

 

 

***

 

 

A call at dawn: the last courier  
passes, low on the horizon, winging  
her way to the capital.  
Her jade wings carried no word from you.

For my sorrow I tolerate no messenger—  
only the wild geese,  
such is our long acquaintance.

 

***

 

My hatred will not drown itself in wine.  
The seven seas are not sufficient to quench its fire;  
their waters cannot match it for bitterness.

 

***

 

The chrysanthemums are flayed of beauty  
and clutter the ground.

The damage is done:  
who would gather them now?  
I wait alone by the window,  
and the night is long in coming.

A fine rain patters on the plantains,  
diminishing by evening—  
drop by drop,  
leaf to leaf.  
The gauze of my veil is drenched.

  
How is it that one word – _sorrow_ – encompasses all this.

 

***

 

Would I were a handmaiden  
of the Lords of the Four Skies!  
I would shed this mourning robe of scales  
and coil myself, mortal,  
in your bed of earth.

I extend my claws but cannot reach you.  
You are gone from me, though I have searched  
to the furthest expanses of the Western sky.

 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] Les Chrysanthèmes](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6261223) by [Chestnut_filly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chestnut_filly/pseuds/Chestnut_filly)




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